Interview with Zeynab Kirikou Gueye & Lau Lukkarila
Zeynab Kirikou Gueye and Lau Lukkarila's Hold yr ache 2 my ache will be performed at Mad House on 24–26 October 2024.
Mad House: You are working collaboratively in a process-oriented way. How do you build both structure and trust within your collaboration?
Lau, Kirikou: We build trust through open communication, daily check ins on how people are feeling, accountability, intentionality of giving and receiving feedback, trial and error. Planning working days based on individual capacities. Working schedule reflects the financial resources. Within that schedule, work planned in accordance to artistic needs and individual resources.
MH: Your work explores the emotionality of the body and how it flows from different social and historical contexts. Could you expand on these themes and how they manifest in your creative process?
Lau, Kirikou: The emotionality of the body is a lived experience that does not take place in a vacuum and it's never neutral. We are working with feelings, expression and perception of the emotional body. The inner embodied experience and the outer gaze are both influenced by our socialization and sociopolitical context we are living and making work in. Colonization, capitalism and nationalism have roots in historical systemic processes, which influence the multiple realities we are living on a daily basis – in and out of the studio. These historical processes direct how we feel feelings: policing or devaluing emotions, apathy and disconnect; they all have a direct connection to the upholding of the status quo. Our conversations within the team about the emotionality of the body inform the practice we create and the material perform. Scores and fake scenarios we decide to perform on stage serve as tools to look and question the topic from different angels and positionalities.
MH: How has the dialogue within your work evolved from your previous projects to this current one?
Lau, Kirikou: Our dialogue is based on exchange of personal interests and an endless flow of ideas, whether emotional or intellectual. We spark curiosity in each other and we laugh and cry. It didn’t used to be this way.
